Verisign has previously blamed the “confusion” created by the launch of new gTLDs for the decline, which was inexorable in 2014.

In October, CEO James Bidzos told financial analysts that “.net may be more susceptible to that confusion that swirls around new gTLDs.”

My similar view is that the existence of new gTLDs is causing people to wake up to the fact that defensive or shopping cart up-sell .net registrations are now superfluous, and that the days of .net riding on big brother .com’s coat-tails may be numbered.

There are still about 31,000 dark .net domains — registered names not present in its zone file — according to Verisign.

At the end of August 2014, .net had 15,569,398 registered names, according to the most recent available ICANN registry report.

Any name, regardless of registry, that does not offer a necessary element of description (from coke.com to rays.pizza and beyond) and remains only a destination will likely get a hard look from their domain name portfolio manager.

If the new gTLDs have done one thing, they have alerted us all to the value of a descriptive URL. This has been a guiding principle of corporate naming consultancies since the founding of that business.

Your name ought to provide the market some direction. With the new gTLDs, that is again possible on the Internet.